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Feb 5, 2017

This week’s theme
Words borrowed from Yiddish

This week’s words
verklempt
yentz
potch
futz
schmatte

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Relative usage over time

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AWADmail Issue 762

Sponsor’s Message: What memories does “old school” evoke in you? “Thank you” instead of “No problem”? Saddle shoes. White handkerchiefs and white gloves. A hand-written note. Hitchhiking. Let us know -- we’re offering this week’s Email of the Week winner, Peggy Issenman (see below), as well as all you traditionistas out there a yuge chance to tell us what you miss most about the world we are losing or have already lost. You may even win some of our authentic ludic loot, to boot. ENTER The Old’s Cool Contest NOW.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the Net

Trump, the Wall, and the Spanish Language
The New York Times
Permalink

Cipher War: Cracking an Ancient Script
The Verge
Permalink

From: Jesse Adams-Doolittle (jdoolittle jm-a.com)
Subject: Anu’s political leanings (Re: AWADmail 761)

Sorry about poor Mark Poore from Santa Ana. People can always make the world a sad place but it seems to be even sadder lately with even the most mild-mannered of our fellow citizens feeling emboldened to give voice to their darkest tendencies. I take solace (and I hope you do too) from the fact that so many of your fellow Americans, and citizens of nations around the world, relish the warmth of your daily diction and your weekly wit.

My biggest regret about Wordsmith is that I don’t get to spend more time reading Wordsmith. I have bestowed countless free AWAD subscriptions upon friends, family, and foes alike! Thanks for everything; I only hope that if we keep leaning, eventually the world will lean with us!

From: Louise Laugenour (weezer410 gmail.com)
Subject: AWADmail 761

Mark Poore says it all for so many of us. Get over it, looser.

From: Katy Capella (kl.capella gmail.com)
Subject: verklempt

I’m sure you knew of the existence of this Saturday Night Live skit -- Coffee Talk with Linda Richman (24 sec.).

Nothing beats a comedian willing to poke fun at his own mother!?

From: Shirley Bershad (shirleykbershad gmail.com)
Subject: verklempt

I am almost verklempt at the gift of having Yiddish words defined for me. I have heard many Yiddish words in my marriage (including verklempt). But until now I have lacked precise definitions.

From: Grant Agnew (ggttwwaa gmail.com)
Subject: Potch

How ironic that the example of usage for today’s word, potch, comes from a book called Polishing Diamonds: Bringing out the Sparkle in our Children!

In Australia, Yiddish has much less influence on English than in the USA. Here, “potch” is a word of unknown etymology and means a sort of half-formed opal. Potch may have some colour, but it lacks the fine colour play of gem-quality stones -- yet it is commonly the matrix in which precious opals are found (paraphrase of the Macquarie Dictionary).

From: Jane Rubinsky (jar360 verizon.net)
Subject: Potch

I grew up in a Jewish family that constantly used this term affectionately and almost mischievously. My dad would say, “I’m going to give you a potch!” when one of us kids made him laugh. To this very day (I’m 64), I give my cats a series of quick, enthusiastic pats on the rump, uttering “Potch-potch-potch-potch-potch” with each contact. (I can barely remember it, but this must have been what my dad did with our dog.) Thanks for the memory!

From: Mary Postellon (mpostellon hotmail.com)
Subject: potch

I learned “potch” in the name of a folk dance: Potch Tanz, which involved clapping. My son learned it the hard way.

He was still of an age and size to use a highchair, and was being babysat by a friend who probably didn’t even realize she was speaking Yiddish. Finished with his lunch, he tried to climb down from the chair, but his sitter, who was busy with something else, was afraid he’d fall and ordered him to stay put or else: “Do you want a potch on the tochas?”

He didn’t know what she meant but figured if she was promising him something, he’d go for it. Wrong guess! He found out his tochas was located where he sat. (And she never babysat for me again.)

From: Jascha Kessler (jkessler g.ucla.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--potch

And, to potchka/potchke is to mess around with people or things, tasks or fact, idly or deliberately humorous, as legislators too often do with their time.

From: David Close (davidclosejr hotmail.com)
Subject: futz

I first read the word “futz” in the works of Larry Niven in the 1970s. He may have started using it earlier than that. I assumed he made it up as a means to get past censorship and avoid offending the sensibilities of the time. The fact that the usage examples you cite date solely from this century doesn’t disabuse me of that notion. It’s a common tactic in science fiction; viz, the series Battlestar Galactica and Farscape, both of which had whole vocabularies of “swear words” that resembled English vulgarities, notably “frak” in Battlestar and “frel” in Farscape. I always admired these circumlocutions as elegant examples of word choices that harness the power of stark vulgarity without offending the sensibilities of the delicate.

From: Steve Kirkpatrick (stevekirkp comcast.net)
Subject: Carl Schurz quotation

He had participated in Germany’s failed revolution of 1848, which pushed for democratic reform. The Kaiser quashed that. After Carl came to America, he met and married Margarethe Meyer Schurz, who later opened the first kindergarten in America (Watertown, Wisconsin; 1854). Carl got involved in politics, and became the first German-American elected to the US Senate. In 1876, he was appointed Secretary of the Interior, a position he held for four or five years. The Battle of the Little Big Horn had occurred a few months before his appointment, so national sentiment was running fervently against Native Americans. There was a strong push to put the Office of Indian Affairs under the War Department. As Secretary of Interior, and as a human rights activist, he knew that was wrong, and successfully blocked that. Imagine how poorly the Native Americans would have fared under the “care” of the War Department!

BTW, in John Ford’s final Western film, Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Edward G. Robinson had a small role as Carl Schurz.

From: Gita Pearl (gitagerry sympatico.ca)
Subject: Schmatte

Sometime before 1970, at a Club Mediterranée in France, I was talking to a “gentil membre” and when I mentioned that I was a “dermatologue” [dermatologist] he said that he was a “schmattalogue”.

From: Daniel B. Martin (danielbmartin earthlink.net)
Subject: schmatte

Consider the lyrics from the Rolling Stones’ song Shattered.

From: David Silverman (silverman.david.m gmail.com)
Subject: Schmatte

You stated that the first documented use of “schmatte” was in 1970. I graduated high school in 1956 in Albany, NY. At that time the term “schmatte business” was already widely used. Since I never learned to speak Yiddish I’m certain it was already spoken outside the Jewish community.

From: Ossie Bullock (osmundbullock aol.com)
Subject: Schmatte

The OED is not, it seems, an authority on the absorption of Yiddish words into English, especially in America! However, it has a separate entry (with the same etymology) under the commoner UK spelling of “s[c]hmutter”, with examples back to 1959; the “schmutter” entry cross-references to the “schmatte” one, but not vice versa, oddly.

I’ve now found an even earlier example from 1958, in the Jewish Chronicle.

From: Karen Bradley (nanipop119 gmail.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--schmatte

This for the conservative Christian... “Your righteousness is as filthy shmattes.” Isaiah 64:6

From: Zirel Handler (zirel fairpoint.net)
Subject: Yiddish Words

So much time and space, too many words wasted on POTUS-created chaos. Yiddish offers a one-word comment: putz.

As a Humanistic (& Culinary) Jew, I often sprinkle my conversations with Yiddish. Sometimes, I find that friends use Yiddish words in odd ways, i.e. “It is a schmucky day today.” I then go to explain what the word schmuck really means and it doesn’t pertain to the weather! But I am at fault too, and have only figured out that the jam company Smuckers isn’t pronounced Schmuckers! At least, I can blame it on my Montreal accent.

From: Alex McCrae (ajmccrae277 gmail.com)
Subject: verklempt and schmatte

Illustrations: Alex McCrae

But for me, his verklempt prone, chatty “Coffee Talk” host, Linda Richman, with her Brooklyn Jewish-inflected accent was my favorite of all Myers’s signature SNL regular sketch roles.

Here, in my illustration, Myers, in drag, as Linda Richman, is having a verklempt moment, while her bemused guest, Peanuts Charlie Brown, assumes a decidedly quizzical air.

Back in my early ’70s art school days at The Ontario College of Art, downtown Toronto, I was within short walking distance from both Chinatown, to the east, and what we fondly referenced as the Spadina Ave. “schmatte district” to the west, dominated by block-upon-block of mostly Jewish-owned clothing manufacturers and their requisite legion of expert tailors, designers, seamstresses, and the like.

So my drawing hopefully captures a typical old-school Jewish tailor at his schmatte craft, literally measuring up one of his regular customers.

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Anagrams of this week's words

From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Subject: Limericks

I expected he'd be a sore loser
And was certain the country would choose her.
Now my brain is unkempt
And my soul is verklempt.
Trump is turning me into a boozer.
-Linda Riebel, Lafayette, California (linda.riebel earthlink.net)

It is hard not to get all verklempt
At his open display of contempt.
"Why should I pay my tax
When alternative facts
Show, as president, I am exempt.”
-Adam Perl, Ithaca, New York (adam pastimes.com)

I returned from long travels unkempt
To find the whole nation verklempt.
Our rights on a gurney,
I wish I’d picked Bernie!
For now we have rule by contempt.
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

It doesn’t make very much sense
For fellow on wife to e’er yentz.
With such extra sport,
He’ll end up in court,
And suffer a deal of expense.
-Chris Papa, Colts Neck, New Jersey (doxite verizon.net)

“On his taxes I’m sure he must yentz,”
Last July thought then-Governor Pence.
“So I’ll run for VP
And soon President be
For impeachable is that offense.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

Said POTUS, “My face they can’t potch
When I grab all the girls by the crotch.
This job is so bigly
It’s making me giggly!
Each day on my belt a new notch.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

My behavior always top-notch,
But if I slipped up or did botch,
My dad, a nice guy,
Would discipline by
Giving my tuchis [bottom] a soft potch.
-Joan Perrin, Port Jefferson Station, New York (perrinjoan aol.com)

Oh, the woes of the procrastinator
who keeps putting things off until later.
Though it drives people nuts,
he continues to futz
around, making those woes even greater.
-Zelda Dvoretzky, Haifa, Israel (zeldahaifa gmail.com)

“If you think my appointees are nuts,”
Says the Donald, “You’re stupid, you putz.
All the best I attract,
It’s an alternate fact,
With credentials there’s no need to futz.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

A balagan of a week catching a plane.
He didn’t futz giving free rein
To executive orders
For fast closing of borders
In ways too offensive to sustain.
-Kathy Deutsch, Melbourne, Australia (kathy deutsch.net.au)

When the President issues a fatwah,
He can’t wear just any old schmatte.
“My Nielsens are huge
With a racist deluge,”
He remarks, “So to look good I gotta.”
-Steve Benko, New York, New York (stevebenko1 gmail.com)

The mother said, “Oy, what’s the matta?”
You’ve got schmutz all over your schmatte.”
Said her daughter, “Not to worry,
I was in a great hurry,
And ran into a brisket frittata.”
-Judith Marks-White, Westport, Connecticut (joodthmw gmail.com)

We Catskills busboys had a lotta
Soiled tables to wipe with a schmatte.
No futzing for us,
Only dishes to bus...
And glasses to fill with ice watah!
-Alan Shoemaker, Moreno Valley, California (alan.m.shoemaker gmail.com)

From: Phil Graham (pgraham1946 cox.net)
Subject: You’ve gotta be kidding

“Gunsmoke” Deputy Chester Goode after verklempt to the Long Branch Saloon.

I was cheated at poker. Yentzforth I’m not playing.

When you slap a cephalopod and it spews ink and dies, that’s the potch killing the cuttle black.

The 7’ tall violinist with gastric distress was nicknamed “HighFutz”.

“Wearing those holey clothes to synagogue! What schmatte you?”

From: Lila Smith (lila_itf hotmail.com)
Subject: Words

Knowing your steady stream of words was coming my way every day gave me hope and allowed me to relax into feeling/watching my brain create new neural pathways back to the language/words that were buried beneath the brain damage from an auto accident. Your words were the baby steps to finding words and being able to get them out of my mouth. The aphasia began to abate as I plugged your words -- some new and many previously held -- into my vocabulary.

Thank you so much for your perseverance. While I have accepted that my brain was forever altered in the accident, I give you great credit for a good measure of improvement that allowed me to return to high functioning. Thank you so much.